Life of a Grunt
by Welsh Charizard
Summary: Follow the successes and failures of a newly hired Team Rocket grunt.


Disclaimer: Don't own Pokemon…there that was easy.

A/N: I created the Team Rocket characters that will appear in this story originally to be used in and throughout my A Trainer's Journey story. I thought I'd try a Team Rocket story though, so I'm recycling characters, and fleshing them out a bit I guess. I realise this is short, but I'm just testing the water. Should I continue, please let me know.

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She was so pumped. After years of trying, and failing, to do something good with her life, she was finally on the up! She was not empathic enough to be a Pokemon nurse, she wasn't charismatic enough to be a TV reporter, she wasn't skilled enough to make poke balls…she wasn't good enough for a lot of things, but this? This she could do. Although whether a person thought that what she was doing was good was up to them really. Years of being told she was good for nothing made her hardened to such opinions though, what did she care.

She strolled casually down the corridor. She had an air of confidence about her now, being told she was good enough for something made her feel on top of the world. She stopped outside a glass door, the words 'Operations Briefing Room' emblazoned upon it in bold, black lettering. Now time to find out about her first assignment. She straightened her hat and breathed deeply before finally entering the room.

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The room was bustling with activity. The conversations she could hear contained various types of voice from exited and nervous to confident and arrogant. She considered herself to be one of the latter group, so much so in fact that she didn't feel the need to join in any conversations at all. She found herself leaning aloofly against the back wall of the room. If only her parents could see her like this now, not that they'd approve exactly of what she was doing. Still they'd deemed her a failure just like everyone else so she didn't really care, well not too much anyway. She did care just enough to want to throw her newfound self-respect and self-confidence in their faces and tell them 'thanks for nothing'.

"Well," she heard a male voice from beside her. "What's a pretty lady like you doing all by herself?"

She turned her head to regard the guy with a critical eye. His hat hung low and his appearance unkempt, he had leaned into the wall in a laid back fashion. She decided then that she didn't really care for him. "Avoiding the likes of you," she sighed, flicking her hair idly.

"Ahh I see, you're one of those 'I'm better than you' types," he laughed a little, before becoming completely serious, tensing his previously relaxed posture, leaning one leg against the wall. "Well I doubt it."

The woman sighed, why was it all the men around here tried to act so macho anyway, did they think it earned them brownie points? "Whatever you say," she replied sarcastically.

"Heh that's right," the guy smirked.

Hoo boy this guy was an idiot. "In case you couldn't tell I was being sarcastic…" she pushed out of her leaning position, taking just a second to kick the leg supporting his body causing him to collapse in a heap on the floor. "…Men."

As she sauntered off, the guy picked himself up off the floor a mixture of surprise, embarrassment and anger etched on his features as people stared at him. "Bitch…" he growled under his breath.

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Meanwhile the woman looked for a new place to park herself. She looked around, more people had entered by now, probably best to get a seat while she still could. Seating herself near the front, hoping to avoid the brutish unkempt idiot as much as possible. She sighed, getting a little agitated has time seemed to stall almost to a halt as she waited for the briefing. She took to drumming her fingers against the desk in front of her. She looked to the door as it opened with some force, giving her, and the rest of the room it had to be said, a shock. She soon settled though, smirking confidently as a tall, stony faced older woman with long, black hair and wearing an equally black uniform and long overcoat combo stood surveying the room, making almost everyone nervous. This was Taylor Fern, the woman who had passed her, and probably a lot of those in the room right now for active duty, so she was going to be briefing them on their first assignment? The confident smirk stayed on her face, though she did straighten out her posture, as the imposing stony glare of the woman surveyed the room slowly before she started striding purposefully towards the front of the room. Most seemed to know what this meant, there was a scramble for seats, everyone determined to get one before Miss Fern reached the front of the room making the confident smirk on the young woman grow even wider, perhaps meeting that jerk at the back wasn't so bad after all.

Unfortunately for some, they had not found a seat before Miss Fern reached the front of the room. Everyone not sitting seemed to freeze as she turned around gazing at them. It was like musical statues, the young woman mused from her seat, still not dwelling too much on the thought and beginning to stare straight ahead, stone faced as she noticed Miss Fern's mouth open, preparing to speak.

"Don't just stand there!" Miss Fern bellowed with a voice that could scare a Legendary Pokemon to death at the motionless standees. "Get out of my briefing room! I don't want people who can't even get to a seat before I'm ready to go on ANY of my missions, now get out before I send you all back to basic training…or WORSE!"

The young woman had never seen anyone move so fast, the room was clear of the stragglers in 5 seconds flat, less maybe. She'd hate to know what the 'or worse' was though, she had to admit. As the last, very ashen faced person left the room, shutting the door behind them, Miss Fern huffed indignantly at the door before turning her attention to the remaining 20 or so people.

"Well then," she said, in a more even, though still strict, tone of voice. "Now that's over and done with, let's get right down to business."

As the woman turned round briefly to pick up a remote of some kind everyone in the room shuffled in order to be sure they were in a good position to see and listen, they certainly did not want to fall foul of her, like the unfortunates that already had. She turned around again, holding the remote in the air and pressing a button. Instantly the lights in the room lowered and a screen lowered from the ceiling. The young woman still sat attentive, though it seemed a few idiots were in wonderment at what was happening, looking around, amazed. She couldn't help but hope that, with the case of these imbeciles, that she could go solo on this mission, or at the very least be paired with one of the saner ones around that weren't in amazement at this 'trick'.

Taylor Fern stepped to one side as a projector began flashing images of their targets and locations onto the lower screen before opening her mouth to speak.

"This will be a relatively simple mission as you are all new additions to this illustrious group," she began. "A few years ago, two rivals, both hoping to become gym leaders, had a great battle in Dark City. Both of these gym leader hopefuls failed the necessary tests to become gym leaders due to their attitude and the gang warfare their rivalry induced. They have been working hard together since and intelligence states that yesterday they put in a join application to open an official tag battle gym in Dark City. The Boss wants us to dispatch you to steal all the gyms Pokemon, especially their Electabuzz and Scizor before the gym inspector, a Nurse Joy travelling in from Cinnabar Island, gets there. Factoring in the rough seas around the Seafoam Islands that gives us 2 days to travel there and perform the snatch. We set out tonight and will be fully briefed on the plan once we get there, you will sleep enroute, is that understood?"

"Yes ma'am," the entire room said in unison.

"Report to the hanger for transportation, you will be given your new Pokemon there too…dismissed." Taylor pressed a button on her remote causing the lights to turn back up.

As everyone filed out of the room, the woman was so excited, her first mission, her first Pokemon, she couldn't wait. By the time this was over the people of Dark City would know the name and wrath of Team Rocket…and Claudia Harman.


End file.
